Ventura Mayor Erik Nasarenko was struck by something when he went to vote Tuesday.

There, on the first page of his ballot, along with president, senator and other high-profile races, were the names of the 10 candidates running for the Ventura City Council.

It reassured him that voters would not bypass choosing their elected officials. He was right — more than double the number of voters showed up to cast a ballot for the council than in the last municipal race.

About 58 percent of the city’s 65,265 registered voters took part in Tuesday's election, and that’s not including mail-in and provisional ballots that have yet to be counted. In 2013, the last council race, roughly 26 percent showed up.

The difference, of course, is that Tuesday marked the first time Ventura residents could vote for City Council in an even year, and it happened to be a presidential election.

In 2014, the council asked voters to decide whether they wanted to switch from voting in odd years to voting in even-year elections.

“Our goal was twofold: one, to lower election-related costs and two, to boost voter turnout, and it appears we have been successful on both fronts,” said Nasarenko, who with council member Carl Morehouse pushed for the change.

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David Chin is the first in line to vote Tuesday morning at Grace Lutheran Church in Ventura.(Photo: JUAN CARLO/THE STAR)

The city won’t know its final costs until December, Nasarenko said, but entities that appear on the ballot together split costs. So in this case, the city, school district, state, county and propositions all share the costs of the election.

The change was supported by all but Morehouse, who favored council terms being shortened rather than increased by a year; and Neal Andrews, who said local measures would get lost in the attention of larger races.

To be sure, there was some voter drop-off, ranging from 46 percent to 54 percent for the other measures, which included a sales tax increase, an open-space initiative and several election-related changes to the city's charter. Voters supported all of them.

But even the lowest turnout was still significantly higher than the turnout for 2013, said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Greenlining Institute, a nonprofit advocacy organization that pushes for greater participation from racial and ethnic minorities.

"While you wish everybody would vote on everything, that still sounds like progress to me," he said.

Drop-off is common, and it's usually small. This year, it might be a little more pronounced because of the long and confusing state ballot, he said.

"It does at times get to the point where it was a burden and that’s an issue we need to think about going forward," he said.

Still, the state is doing much to make it easier to vote, from moving elections to even years, as in Ventura and Los Angeles, to offering online voter registration.

"This is something that as Californians we can be proud of, particularly when we see other parts of the country making it harder to vote," Mirken said.